Scientists have discovered that when darkness falls, the pineal gland in our brain produces more melatonin. As this hormone rises, you start to feel sleepy. The moment you fall asleep, the level of melatonin goes much higher. But here's the catch: Melatonin doesn't rise very high unless you've gone to bed at the proper time and the room you are in is very dark. The darker it is, the higher melatonin will rise. Any type of light, even a soft night light, can affect melatonin levels. Researchers think the strong association between light and melatonin production may be a major explanation as to why breast cancer is more common in industrialized regions where city lights burn all night and why blind women have a fifty percent lower incidence of breast cancer compared to women who can see. By following this simple bedtime advice, you will receive the profound health benefits of a spoke in melatonin that naturally occurs between midnight and 1 a.m.
There are several major attributes of melatonin that explain why it is so protective against breast cancer.
- Melatonin is a very potent antioxidant. Antioxidants destroy oxygen free radicals that can harm your cells and DNA, inflicting damage that can lead to cancer.
- Melatonin slows down the production of estrogen and prevents its overproduction. Estrogen stimulates breast cells, causing cell division to speed up. The faster the cell divide, the higher the risk of cancer.
- Melatonin depresses the effects of epidermal growth factor and the hormone prolactin, both of which increase cell division in the breast.
- Melatonin enhances the tumor-fighting power of vitamin D, making it twenty-one hundred times stronger.
If you have been diagnosed with breast cancer, going to bed early in a dark room is particularly important. Breast cancer tumors in laboratory animals exposed to constant light grow seven times faster, If your doctor has recommended that you be treated with chemotherapy, you may also want to seriously consider taking supplemental melatonin. Researchers have documented that it can enhance the effectiveness of chemotherapy by increasing the drugs' ability to destroy tumors. An Italian study, found that breast cancer patients treated with chemotherapy lived longer if they were also given supplemental melatonin. These patients had an increased "one-year survival rate", meaning that more women than would normally have been expected were alive one year following the diagnosis of breast cancer. Melatonin supplements given in addition to chemotherapy also caused the size of the tumors in women to decrease significantly more, compared to the administration of chemotherapy alone.
